How to calm his money fears.

[barose]

My SO has a fear of survival (or lack of). He’s not cheap or super duper fugal, but he does get really uptight about money.

We are planning on ttc again in about a year. We both have gone back and forth if I should stay home (after maternity leave) or go back to work.

A part of me would love to stay home, but I have a tendency towards extreme isolation and working outside the home keeps me balanced. He doesn’t have family in the area and his extended family consists of elderly parents and an older sister, that’s it; and my family and I are not very close. I have no close friends. Part-time is not an option in my job and occupation. Nor is telecommuting.

A part of him would like for me to stay home, but I carry the insurance for us and to pay for it outright for three people would be through the roof (probably more than childcare). He has his own business and makes pretty good money, but of course benefits are up to him. He is at an age where a good private insurance plan would cost about $500/mo (not including me an a baby). Also he has an extreme survival fear, that if I stop working, he will have to carry the entire financial burden for us – I don’t want that either. We talk about possibilities if I lose my job, but that would be a temporary situation, not for an extended period of time.

Him closing his business and working is rarely an option for an almost 50 year old man, with no college degree and hasn’t had an outside job in almost 30 years. Especially if he wants a comparable salary ($70 - 300K depending on the year minus taxes, etc) and GOOD benefits.

No matter what we end up deciding if I stay home or not, how can we alleviate his survival fears? I’m encouraging him to talk about it in therapy but is anyone else going through this?

[Amys1st]

Hmm this is tough. I always wanted to sah w my girls and I do. But its a lifestyle and really, it was a lot easier for us than most couples. But, my dh was on board 100% and still is. Whether you work outside the home or not, you both have to be 100% on board. When they baby comes, if you are a WOHmama, you will need your SO to help with many things not just the $ but also being a father etc. If you dont want to SAH, then dont. It can be isolating at times but if you need to provide basic things such as benefits, then you will need to keep your job. Its a lot to sort out and I am sorry if I am rambling.

[barose]

You're right about both parties being 100% on it - but I know a lot of people dont/cant decide until they have the baby. He works from home so though he is busy with work, he's not very far in case I need help or a break if I were to SAH. I wish things such as decent health insurance was so exclusive in this country.

[greenegirl]

Wow, I could have written large parts of your post. My DH and I have been having a similar conversation. He is 42, I'm 33 (in a couple weeks) and we are currently ttc our first child. He is not currently self-employed, but he works in a highly volatile industry (software developer) and has been through difficult times with several companies. We are worried about his current employer. I have been wanting to quit my job for a few years, even though we don't have any children yet, and DH has been resistant.

I've been handling it this way. First of all, I have been working to understand what DH's fear really is. What is the worst case scenario as he sees it? In the case of my DH, it isn't so much a fear of losing his current job, although that is what he is focused on the most. He's really afraid that he wouldn't be able to find another job if he were to be laid off from this one. There is a valid reason for this fear -- it once took him almost a year to find a job. The job market has changed since then, but this is the source of his fear.

Now that I understand this, the goal is to address the actual problem. What would make DH feel prepared for this worst case scenario? In my case the answer is to have 2 years worth of expenses saved in easily accessible vehicles. DH prefers that this be savings and/or CDs. We have not yet met that goal, but are working on it. We do own some individual stocks which could be sold if necessary, and the value of these is probably 18 months worth of expenses. But DH wants money in savings and/or CDs because he does not want to consider the stock as part of this plan.

Another part of the problem is that DH has an unrealistic picture of our financial situation. This is largely my fault as I am the one doing the bills and keeping track of everything. I've been behind on the recordkeeping and so haven't had accurate information to give him. So I've been working on getting this up to date and making sure that I share information with DH when I have it. As soon as I am up to date, I intend to provide him with a monthly report he can review. In addition, I drew a thermometer on to the white board that hangs by my desk. The thermometer has the 2-year-expense goal on it and is filled in to our current savings balance. I will add to it each month. This puts the goal visually in front of both of us.

You might also try an experiment -- while you are still working, put your net check directly into savings and don't touch it. This lets you build up savings, but also lets you see what it is like to only use DH's income to live on. Can you do it?

Over Christmas, DH finally agreed to let me start working part time. I didn't think this was going to be possible in my current job, but my first day back from Christmas vacation, I found some things have changed around here and it looks like it may work out. For now I am working full time while some details are being decided, but my boss and by boss's boss both know that I intend to work part time. I am trusting the universe to put this piece in place.

[EviesMom]

I feel like I've said this a lot, lately, so if you've read other posts by me about this, certainly skip it! (Or tell me to "settle down" like dd does). Presuming you're more enamored of the "equal-familial-responsibilities" structure over a gender-specific model, I think you have to break down all the responsiblities for the household down (financial, childcare, cooking, laundry, etc.) and then you can figure out how to divide them. It might help your husband to see that the responsibilities are more evenly shared, even when his responsiblity is more monetary than yours.

My husband and I both own small businesses, but in the last 3 years, we've had: each of us having a half-time job, me working weekends, him during the week, and me staying home. After dd was born, we went through several difficult adjustments and eventually hit on this system:

First we ignored the cost of childcare and any other household help. We figured out how much money our family needed as a base. Then how much work this meant total per week (using the average of our hourly wages). Then how many hours were available for work. Some people are fine working 7 days a week between two people, or more hours/day because they can do night shifts, etc.

But for us, this meant that there were roughly 6 working days per week of about 8-9 hours a day we were willing to work. So the even split version would be that each of us worked 3 days and watched dd 3 days. The SAHM version would mean dh working 6 days a week. From there, we could negotiate childcare and hours.

In your case, you might want to calculate the cost of getting private insurance for the whole family (if your husband owns a small business, he might be able to get a "group" policy through the business and remember when calculating that you should be able to deduct the cost of the policy on your taxes). That would reduce his income in your calculations (So if he makes $70K a year and insurance would run $15K/year, then calculate as if he makes $55K a year).

We settled on dh working 5 days a week (and thereby being responsible for 5/6 the income) and me working 1 day a week. Any additional time that either of us wants or needs to put in means that we pay for the childcare and/or household help when needed). So if dh needs to work on a Saturday (his day to watch dd), he hires and pays for the sitter (often me, but he does pay me for the day). I took on a project in September that runs through March 1st, and pay for a sitter 2 afternoons a week out of what I make on that project. You might not be able to change your job to part-time, but you might be able to start something else using some of your skills.

I hope that's helpful and good luck!

[barose]

Originally Posted by EviesMom

Presuming you're more enamored of the "equal-familial-responsibilities" structure over a gender-specific model,

I think you hit the nail on the head. The more I think about it, I think my fears equal his. I want to be able to care for myself financially no matter how much money he is able to pull in.

I have a fear of not having any money = freedom on my own if I stop working. I read numerous posts from SAHMs who write about waiting for DH to come home so they can buy groceries, having only one car in the family so they are at home w/o a way to get around and so on. I dont think I cant live like that and my DP WONT go for me not having any money or car of my own; but that is my fear that go along with his financial fears.

This is something that I and we will have to explore more.

[barose]

As an update: We've been dealing with more immediate issues, but I do bring up SAH (only if I'm a mom!) every now and then and he clams up. So I asked him how much would he have to make per year in order for him to be comfortable with me staying at home - he stated "around $200K". It’s been done and its doable, but I don’t want him locked into a number either.

I think part of the reason he clams up is because although his mother stayed home (and never worked day in her life ) she wasn’t there; she was and still is an alcoholic, and would always, always leave him and his sister home alone socializing. Basically, he was abandoned and he hasn’t yet come to terms with it.

It sounds like we have a lot of work to do. I guess I am undecided if I want to stay home full-time or not myself. I think in our case, its best to keep our options open, but be prepared for anything.

Again, thanks for your advice.